


Living Witness

by ImpishTubist



Series: Living Witness [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Asexuality, Character Death, Domestic Violence, Fluff, Kid!Fic, Language, Paternal Lestrade, Sexual Content, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-23
Updated: 2014-04-20
Packaged: 2018-01-16 18:26:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 20,777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1357477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ImpishTubist/pseuds/ImpishTubist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alice Watson is four months old when her father walks out of her life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> While I unfortunately can’t place the blame for this squarely on Carolyn-Claire’s shoulders, she is responsible at least for planting some Sherlock/Mary ideas in my head and writing a fantastic meta about John’s addiction to violence that really got me thinking. So, thank you for that! Many thanks also to Kim, who patiently guided me as I wrote this and provided a ton of helpful suggestions. This wouldn’t have been possible without you, my friend. I'm so very grateful for your help!
> 
> Victor Trevor is a character from ACD canon, and he appears in “The Adventure of the _Gloria Scott_.”
> 
> This fic is not sympathetic to John. I would advise not reading further if that’s going to bother you.

Alice Watson is four months old when her father walks out of her life.

It takes a further three months for Sherlock to find out about it.

He sees John at least once a week, sometimes twice. Usually, John stops by Baker Street on the mornings when he isn’t working to see if Sherlock has any need for help with a case. More often than not, Sherlock does - the price of fame - and the two of them will work on said case until other more pressing obligations call John away. 

Mary has been keeping long hours at the clinic as of late, as though she feels she needs to now make up for the time that she took off in the spring in order to be with newborn baby Alice. Their weekly dinners with Sherlock taper off, and before he knows it, twelve weeks have passed since he last visited the Watson residence, though John still appears in Baker Street every week.

“Dinner,” Sherlock announces one day. “This Friday.”

John looks up from the newspaper he has been flipping through.

“Since when do you make social plans?” he asks dryly.

“I haven’t seen my godchild in three months,” Sherlock says with a sniff. “I think I’m now entitled to a dinner.”

“You’re just there for the free scotch.”

“That, too.”

John folds up the paper and sets it aside. “Friday’s not good. Rain check for next weekend?”

But the next weekend falls through as well, or so John claims. Sherlock knows that John and Mary don’t keep many close friends and Alice isn’t old enough to be engaging in play dates with other children, so it’s unlikely they have anything truly important going on. He drops by the Watson household on Saturday evening despite John’s excuses, and it’s Mary who answers the door. She looks surprised to see him, and then her face goes white.

“Something’s happened to John,” she says, looking deathly scared. Sherlock frowns at her.

“No, of course not. Don’t be ridiculous.” He pushes his way past her and into the foyer. “He said he was going to be here tonight.”

“When?” Mary asks, almost too quickly. “When did you speak to him?”

“Yesterday.” Sherlock frowns at her. “Why isn’t he here?”

Mary considers him for a long moment. 

“He hasn’t been here for a long time,” she says finally, quietly. “He moved out almost three months ago.”

There is a cry from the other room. Mary goes to soothe her daughter. Sherlock, shocked for the first time in over a year, stands rooted to the spot. 

“What do you mean, he moved out?” Sherlock asks when he tracks Mary down to the living room. She is rocking seven-month-old Alice, whose mouth is twisted in grief as fat tears spill from her eyes. The cause of her distress seem to be the fact that she dropped her favourite toy under the sofa, and Sherlock gets down on hands and knees to retrieve it.

“Oh, that’s where it went,” Mary says breathlessly. “Ally, can you say thank you to Uncle Sherlock?”

“ _Choo_ ,” Alice mumbles morosely, but the tears largely stop. She hugs the stuffed dog close, and Sherlock smooths a hand over the top of her head. Her blonde hair is thin and fine, and longer than when he last saw her. John’s grey eyes stare back at him, and they are red with grief.

“She’s speaking now,” Mary says quietly. “But she only knows a few words. _Choo_ is for train. She says _dada,_ too. I can’t - she doesn’t say _mama_ , yet.”

Mary swallows hard, and adds, “She cried for him every night for two weeks. How do you tell a baby that their father has gone?”

Sherlock holds out his arms, and Mary transfers Alice to him. She cuddles up against his chest and rests her head over his heart. 

“Why did he do it?” Sherlock asks.

“He said it was too much for him,” Mary says. Her words are dull and absent; without inflection. A lesser person would assume that she is uncaring. Sherlock knows that she is numb, and the only way she can talk about it is if she disconnects from the situation. “The lies. I’m a murderer; a deception. He was taken in. He said - he wished he had never met me. He even switched jobs so we wouldn’t be working at the same clinic anymore.”

Mary swipes the heel of her hand under an eye, wiping away a lone tear. “He wouldn’t even hold Alice. He just - withdrew. I didn’t realise -”

She breaks off, swallows again, and then continues. “I didn’t realise that you were unaware of the situation. I just thought - that you agreed with him. That’s why I didn’t hear from you.”

Sherlock tells her of his meetings with John; how they had been continuing on as usual.

“I had no idea,” he says, and though this is ignorance painful to admit, at the same time, he _needs_ Mary to understand this. “I had no idea that he’d left, Mary. I never would have - not to you. Not to Alice.”

It pains him to know that he had failed to properly read John for all those months. Caring is not an advantage, indeed. His duties as godfather and his feelings towards John and Mary have obstructed his objectivity, it seems, and he can no longer rationally observe their family dynamics the way he could a group of strangers. 

“He’s right, though,” Mary says quietly, and Sherlock pulls himself from his thoughts. “I am a murderer.”

“So are we,” Sherlock says. “John and I have killed. Do you have plans to do it again?”

“No,” Mary says, looking aghast. And then, after a moment: “Well. Not unless someone I love is threatened.”

She’s looking at Alice. Sherlock does the same.

“Yes,” he says. “I know the feeling.”

“When he comes around again,” Mary says, “will you tell him - oh, I don’t know. Tell him that I want to talk. I know this has been hard for him, but for Alice’s sake, I’d just like to talk to him.”

Sherlock agrees.

\------

It’s almost a week before John shows up in Baker Street again.

During that time, Sherlock suspends his current cases so that he can properly catch up with Mary and Alice. He doesn’t need words with Mary, not really, and most of the questions he has can be answered by deducing items around the house or the expression on her face. Now that the facade has been dropped, he can see everything that he had missed for the past three months.

But Alice is a child, and children are inexplicable. Sherlock has missed her speaking her first words, which causes him unexpected pain, but now she babbles them over and over whenever he comes to visit. There’s _choo_ and _dada_ , but there is also _wada_ and _meefee_ and a host of other indecipherable words. 

She isn’t walking yet, but she tries. She can almost pull herself to her feet using the sturdy leg of a low table, and with Sherlock’s or Mary’s assistance, she manages it. She doesn’t stay upright for long, but the few seconds she manages it are enough for Mary to snap pictures on her mobile. 

Sherlock returns to the flat one morning after seeing Lestrade at the Yard to discover that John is already there.

He’s sitting in his customary chair, and he looks up from the newspaper he’s been perusing when Sherlock enters the flat.

“Body found by the Thames; did you see that?” he greets. Sherlock pauses for a brief moment before shrugging out of his coat and hanging it on the back of the door.

“It’s a three. Mugging gone wrong,” he says. “Not worth my time.”

“I’d have thought it would be an eight at least,” John says, clearly enjoying this. “The article says he was missing his fingers.”

“Newspaper articles are out of date the moment they go to press,” Sherlock says dismissively. “It was rodent activity, not malicious intent.”

John snorts and shakes his head. “Poor bugger. Say, have you eaten?”

“You left Mary.”

He hadn’t meant to bring it up so soon, but Sherlock knows now that he wouldn’t be able to sit through the facade of dinner. John is easier to reason with when he is pliant with drink, but Sherlock realises now that he doesn’t have the willpower to put up a mask for so long. 

John’s delight fades from his face, but he doesn’t look chagrined. More like resigned. “Yeah. Thought it was best, what with her being - what she is and all.”

“ _Who_ she is,” Sherlock corrects irritably. “And that would be _your wife_ , if I’m not mistaken. And I’m not, since I was there when you wed her.”

“She’s not my wife, she’s a liar,” John says firmly. “She’s been lying to me since the day we met.”

“She hasn’t told you every detail of her life history. That’s hardly lying. You’ve been doing the same to her - unless she knows that you shot a man the night we met and then laughed about it afterwards?” Sherlock returns. “And I assume she doesn’t know about the illegal weapon you’ve been harbouring.”

John’s expression darkens. “Since when did you become plagued by an ethical crisis? How many people have you murdered?”

“Twelve in my two years away,” Sherlock says. “Five before then, all on various cases. I feel their deaths are justified, as no doubt Mary feels that her murders were for a cause; men who needed to die.”

“She was a _contract assassin_ ,” John spits.

“She was working for the CIA, and you were a soldier employed by the government. Both of you received money for your kills - money for services rendered, if you will,” Sherlock says with a shrug. “I don’t care about that, by the way. I never did. But I detest hypocrisy, and I always have. You can’t suddenly decide that what is just and moral for you is different for the woman you married.”

“She _deceived_ me,” John snarls. “I bet that child isn’t even mine. It’s probably David’s.”

Sherlock crosses the distance between them before he realises what he’s doing. His limbs act of their own accord, his mind blank, and he strikes John across the face.

“She has your eyes,” he snaps. And then, flatly, “Go to hell.”

 

When Mary answers her mobile later that afternoon, she sounds slightly out of breath.

“Sherlock, I can’t really talk right now, I need to pick up Alice -”

“I’ve done that already,” he says, interrupting her. He’s holding Alice on his hip, and the baby gurgles as though on cue. “Come to Baker Street.”

There is a pause while Mary processes this. “Oh - well, I should really go home first -”

“No need. Everything’s already here.”

“... What?”

When Mary Watson steps into the flat twenty minutes later, for a moment it looks as though she might laugh. And then her face falls.

“Sherlock,” she says gently, “what is going on?”

The living room of 221B is filled with boxes. Mary glances into the kitchen and sees even more, stacked on the table and the floor and the counter. It took Mycroft’s men six hours to pack up John and Mary’s house and move the essential contents over to Baker Street. The rest were put into storage. Sherlock estimates that the home itself will be sold within a couple of weeks. 

“You’re moving in,” he says. He bounces Alice on his hip for added effect. “Both of you are.”

“Are we?” Mary suddenly looks very weary. “Look, Sherlock, I appreciate the gesture, but we can’t. That’s our - _my_ home.”

“It’s too big for just the two of you,” Sherlock presses. “And this way you won’t need a babysitter. When Alice gets older, she’ll be within walking distance of school. And -”

Mary holds up a hand, and Sherlock falls silent. 

“I can take care of myself,” she says. “And I can take care of Alice. It’s not easy, but I can do it by myself.”

“That hardly makes any sense,” Sherlock says. “Baker Street is the most convenient option. You’ll stay here.”

The Mary he remembers would have put up more of a fight. She probably would have single-handedly moved herself and Alice back to the Watson household that very night, boxes and all.

But Mary is weary, worn by the ordeal of the past three months - hell, by the ordeal that has plagued her since shortly after the wedding. Marriage to John and everything he put her through has sucked the life out of her, and so she simply shrugs and says, “For tonight, at least. I suppose there’s no point in going home now. It’s late. We’ll leave tomorrow.”

Mary and Alice stay for the weekend. Then, with the start of the work week, Mary decides it’s best to put off the move until the following weekend. She leaves Alice with Sherlock and walks to work every morning, returning promptly at six each evening. Sherlock can tell that she’s half-expecting John every time she opens the flat door upon her return home, and her disappointment - and relief - when she discovers he’s not there is palpable.

And then Sherlock blinks, and three weeks have passed. Mary is staying in his bedroom while Alice sleeps upstairs in John’s old room, and Sherlock sleeps on the sofa in the living room when he’s home at all. Cases keep him busy most nights, and he usually returns to the flat just as Mary is rising for the day. She showers and Sherlock naps, and an hour after she leaves for work Alice wakes herself up. Sherlock feeds her and plays with her, and then he’ll carry her around the flat balanced on his hip while he puzzles through his cases. 

Alice grows faster than Sherlock can keep track of. Her white-blonde hair grows in waves and her eyes are a clear grey, and it seems as though every other week Mary is purchasing new outfits for her. Sherlock takes what little energy he isn’t expending on cases and starts to catalogue his goddaughter. He memorizes her tiny nose and the bow of her lips, and the way five of her tiny fingers can curl around the end of one of his. He measures her every morning, and charts her growth in a small leather-bound journal. She’s small for her age but has hit all the appropriate milestones - speaking, teething, crawling. Soon she will be standing upright, and then walking. Sherlock records each of these events in the journal, comparing his notes with child development literature and trying to draw conclusions about this tiny creature who cannot yet even form sentences. The journal becomes a testament and a record; an ink-and-paper witness to Alice’s life. It is proof that Alice was once only the length of his forearm; that her feet are small enough to hold in the palm of his hand; that she said _mama_ on the second of November and hasn’t stopped saying it since. 

Sometimes Alice wakes in the middle of the night, crying, and more often than not Sherlock is the one who tends to her. He keeps strange hours and Mary needs to be up in the morning to work; it seems only right. He gets rid of John’s armchair and replaces it with a rocking chair from Mrs Hudson, and that is where he soothes the tiny child.

The subject of cases eventually comes up.

“You’re going to get yourself killed, you know,” Mary tells Sherlock one night when he comes back from working on a case with a slight limp. He waves it off.

“I’ve had worse.”

“That’s my point.” Mary crosses her arms over her chest. “Don’t be a fool, Sherlock, it doesn’t suit you. Why are you taking these risks?”

“It’s my job.” Sherlock narrows his eyes at her. “Why do you care?”

“Why do I - because you’re my friend! I’d rather not come home to discover you dead, if it’s all the same to you.”

“Does this mean you’re staying?”

Mary closes her mouth, and Sherlock smirks. 

“We’ll stay,” she says finally, though as they’ve been living at Baker Street for nearly two months now, it’s hardly a surprise. “On one condition - you stop trying to break your neck.”

“I can’t make that promise and you know it.” Sherlock goes into the kitchen and fetches a cold compress. He sits in a chair and props his legs up on the table before applying the compress to his throbbing knee. 

“Do you remember our wedding?” Mary asks, her arms crossed over her chest as she surveys him. “And how you made a vow to always watch over us? You can’t very well do that if you’re dead.”

Sherlock feels a pang.

“I haven’t done an adequate job of it so far,” he says. “This current situation speaks to that well enough.”

“So start,” Mary says. “Start now. Be more careful from now on. Start looking after yourself. I’m afraid -”

She breaks off suddenly. Sherlock looks up from his examination of his knee. 

“What?”

“I’m afraid,” Mary says finally, “that one of these days you’re going to flounce out that front door… and you’re not going to come back.”

\-----

Sherlock keeps a box of letters under his bed. 

He looks through them occasionally, though by now he has memorized every word that has been written on the yellowing papers. Each one is meticulously dated, and to flip through them is like reading a diary. Sherlock likes to imagine that, as one reads through the letters, a vivid picture of the writer forms - tall and brawny, dark-haired and hazel-eyed, that crooked grin that was both devastating and charming. But Sherlock knows that Victor exists only in his mind’s eye, frozen in time at twenty-six.

_ Having a devil of a time here,  _ begins one letter, dated September 1999. _Wish I could say more on the subject, but Mycroft would have my head. I_ can _tell you that the weather’s delightful, the people are charitable, and I miss you terribly._

_ Dull _ , another letter reads, this one dated August of 2000 and postmarked in Germany. _Dull, dull, dull. One more day of this tedium and I’m blowing my cover just to get some excitement around here._

_ Well, I now know what it feels like to be cooked alive,  _ Victor wrote in 2002, on the back of a postcard from Nevada. _How people survive the summer here, I’ll never know._

And all of Victor’s letters end the same way: _With love, V._

Sherlock tends to consult the box of letters when he is feeling particularly low or uncertain, finding comfort in the familiar scrawl and the obvious affection that pours from each page. Affection that he never deserved, but which Victor had in abundance anyway. He wonders where they would be now, if Victor had lived. He wonders what their life together would have looked like.

He knows that there is no small irony in the fact that it would look something like this, with a baby giggling in the living room and another body in Sherlock’s bed. 

Sherlock closes up the box of letters and relocates it to the back of his wardrobe, where it’s less likely that Mary will stumble upon it. 

\----

John still stops by on occasion, but it is always in the afternoon. Mary is at work by that point, and luckily enough, Alice always happens to be downstairs with Mrs Hudson. All of Mary’s and Alice’s things have been put away in the two respective bedrooms. If John notices the signs of Sherlock now sleeping on the sofa, he doesn’t comment on them. He’ll figure it out eventually - they can’t keep this up forever. But it does tell Sherlock one crucial thing - John isn’t keeping tabs on his wife and child.

Their spat just prior to Mary and Alice moving in seems to have largely been forgotten. John comes looking for cases, which Sherlock now can’t provide the way he used to. He’s promised to stop trying to break his neck, as Mary so eloquently put it, and though he still occasionally feels a pang of craving, largely that has now been replaced by the wonders of taking care of a tiny child.

The thing is, Alice is unpredictable. People are dull, ordinary, and tedious, but children - especially this child - are a constant source of wonder for Sherlock. He spends his days with her trying to decipher her gurgled speech or attempting to expand her vocabulary, and watching her learn about the world through brand-new eyes is fascinating for him. 

And so Sherlock can’t provide the heart-pounding cases that John had become accustomed to during their association, and he can see that it makes John irritable. He’s disappointed and thrumming with pent-up energy every time they meet, and there is nothing Sherlock can do to relieve it. 

His visits taper off. Sherlock knows that they won’t cease entirely, and there’s a small part of him that is glad of that. He hopes, every time he sees John in Baker Street, that it will be the friend he remembers. He is disappointed every time, though. It seems as though John is becoming less and less the man Sherlock knew and turning instead into a complete stranger. 

Mary is home one Saturday afternoon with Alice, the two of them napping together on the sofa. Mary is recovering from a long week at the clinic, and Alice’s nap happens to coincide with hers. Sherlock takes advantage of the momentary quiet in the flat, which always seems to now be buzzing with activity, and takes the time to work on some articles he has been writing for various journals. Shortly after three, he goes to make coffee and realises that they are running low on formula for Alice, and so a trip to the shops is in order. 

When Sherlock returns an hour later, he opens the door to the flat and stops dead on the threshold.

Mary and John stare back at him.

“What the hell kind of farce is this?” John snarls. He appears livid, but Sherlock’s gaze is drawn to Mary’s face instead. There is a mark high on her left cheekbone that could have been mistaken for makeup in a woman Sherlock didn’t know as well. 

Mary doesn’t wear makeup.

“Get out, John,” Sherlock says flatly.

“What the hell are you doing with my wife?”

“She lives here now.”

“Bullshit.” John curls his hand into a fist and then relaxes it. It is remarkably steady. His eyes are clear and alert, though there is a fading bruise around his left eye. Sherlock knows then that John has been seeking - and finding - the thrill that Sherlock won’t give him elsewhere. 

Alice, who up until now has been watching the proceedings from her playpen in the corner, gives a tremulous, _“Dada_.”

Mary looks visibly pained. John flinches, but he makes an aborted move towards the playpen, as though he is going to soothe his daughter. Alice watches him approach and starts to cry, and John freezes. Sherlock crosses the room on impulse and lifts Alice into his arms. She calms almost instantly and sits there in his grip, sniffling plaintively.

Mary comes over to him and takes Alice out of his arms, and Sherlock takes the opportunity to insert himself between John and Mary. 

“You need to leave,” he says, holding out a hand and silently begging John not to come any closer. 

For a moment, Sherlock fears that John will refuse, and he doesn’t want to have to use force to get him out of 221B. But then, wordlessly, John turns on his heel and makes for the door. Sherlock follows, and when they’re on the landing, he hisses, “Strike her again, and I break that hand.”

John gives him a look that could melt steel and leaves.

Mary settles Alice back in her playpen and follows Sherlock into the kitchen. She leans against the counter and, at his unspoken request, turns her head so he can properly examine the mark John’s hand left behind. The sudden hot flash of rage is difficult to suppress, and for a moment Sherlock can’t think beyond that all-consuming anger. But then Mary’s voice brings him back to himself, and he is able to snap into damage-control mode.

“What’s wrong with him?”

“I told you once that I solve crimes as an alternative to getting high,” Sherlock says. He fetches a cold compress. “John is addicted to violence as much as I am to the stimulation of a puzzle. He needed the cases I used to provide for him as much as I did. But I take fewer risks now, and he needs something to feed his addiction. I can only assume, given his state tonight, that he is seeking out his own risks. He came here tonight looking for a case, and when he found you here, he tried to get a fight out of it. One that you wouldn’t give.”

Sherlock hands her the compress and adds, quietly, “I’m sorry. I had intended to be back sooner.”

“You can’t have known he would come by.” Mary’s mouth tightens in resignation. “It was bound to happen sooner or later. I’m sorry. I hope I haven’t made things difficult for the two of you.”

Sherlock reaches out, changes his mind, and balls his hand into a fist instead and lets it drop to his side. 

“You haven’t done a thing wrong, in this instance,” he says after a moment’s contemplation. “Your well-being is more important than his. I hope you realise that.”

The look of shock on Mary’s face tells him quite plainly that she doesn’t. 

Sherlock stops by Mrs Hudson’s flat the next day, after Mary has left for work.

“The locks on the flat have been changed,” he says, handing her a copy of the new key. “The door will remain locked at all times, so be sure to keep that with you if you ever decide to stop by. You aren’t to allow any visitors. I will meet clients down here first before seeing them upstairs.”

“Who are you trying to keep out, dear?” Mrs Hudson asks, looking almost amused as she pockets the new key.

“John,” Sherlock says, and he takes no satisfaction from the look of surprise on her face. 


	2. Chapter 2

Sherlock lies Alice out on the sofa each morning in order to dress her for the day. She doesn’t like to be still, not even for a moment, and she protests loudly at being made to put on clothes. If she had her way, she would be content crawling about the flat in only her nappy. Sherlock has learned from Mary (and from the occasional YouTube video) a variety of different ways to keep Alice entertained. He makes faces at her, distracts her with toys, coos nonsense words, and hopes that he managed to disable all of Mycroft’s listening devices during his monthly sweep of the flat. 

This is the time when Alice reminds him most of John, and whereas Sherlock used to find that endearing, now it concerns him more than he likes to admit. She is always on the move, always needing to be active, and Sherlock remembers well the John who was unable to sit still. John, who went to war because he needed a fix. John, who has always craved violence and who used Sherlock as a way to meet his needs. 

Sherlock wonders of Alice will have those same tendencies. He knows that when it comes to raising children, the debate between nature and nurture is a false dichotomy; it is a combination of those factors that influences children as they grow. Alice is John’s daughter and always will be; his blood flows through her veins, and his DNA shaped her nose and gave her bright grey eyes. But she also has Mary’s mouth and hair, and the shape of her mother’s face. Sherlock hopes that Alice will also have Mary’s practicality and her kindness, and that even if she has John’s problematic tendencies, that she will have her mother’s rationality. Mary channeled her unconventional impulses into beneficial work, and she has largely left that life behind.

More than anything, though, Sherlock hopes that Alice will never be plagued with a violent temperament, and he hopes that she will never fall victim to the cruel crush of tedium like he does. He hopes that she never craves the battlefield like John did. He hopes that she leads a quiet life, a gentle life, a _normal_ life. Once, he would have considered that the worst punishment he could wish upon someone. 

There are nights when Alice doesn’t sleep. Sherlock, her minder during the day, often will be the one to sit up with her at night since his own sleeping pattern is as variable as hers. Mary, he can tell, is bothered by the fact that she can’t be around Alice as much as Sherlock is, but he reassures her multiple times that it’s fine. She endured months of parenting alone after John left - probably even before, actually, given John’s reticence to accept the family he had started. And eventually, things will calm down and she will have time again.

Sherlock paces the length of the living room on these sleepless nights, back and forth, with Alice settled on his chest. He supports her with a hand under her bottom and one on her back, though occasionally he will shift her until she is resting in the crook of his arm. 

It’s during this strange hour of night, when stillness has fallen over the flat and even the nocturnal animals are quiet, that Sherlock consults an area of his mind palace that he ignores throughout the day. He keeps this part of his brain under lock and key and strictly isolated, though it is perhaps the singular most important part of himself. It is also the most painful area of his mind, and he visits it only sparingly.

In this corner of his mind, Victor is alive and whole, and he looks much like Sherlock remembers him - vibrant and youthful, with a hint of stubble on his face. Over the years, Victor’s image has dimmed and blurred at the edges. The tides of time have eaten away at his visage, and as the years since his death increase, Sherlock knows his image will fade. Victor’s voice already has. But the mark Victor left upon his life never will, for Sherlock knows that most of who he is today is because of Victor’s influence. 

_ What do I do?  _ Sherlock asks on nights when Alice is crying with no sign of letting up.

_ Did you change her nappy?  _ Victor reminds him. _Is she fed? Is she warm? Try the loose floorboard over by the window; perhaps the creaking sound it makes when you walk over it will lull her to sleep._

_ She’s in pain,  _ Sherlock realises on a different night, sometime after Alice starts to teethe. 

_ It’s natural,  _ Victor tells him. _All babies go through it. Sometimes it helps to rub her gums. Try that._

_ She deserves better than I can give _ , Sherlock thinks in despair one night, long after Alice has fallen asleep. He continues to pace with her in his arms, because she wakes up the moment he is still. 

_ It doesn’t get better than you,  _ Victor says firmly. _I spent seven years with you. I would know._

In his mind’s eye, Sherlock gives Victor a crooked, sad smile. _I love you._

Victor doesn’t answer that, mostly because Sherlock never believed him when he said it in real life. But what he wouldn’t give right now to hear those words uttered again.

\-----

Sherlock keeps tabs on John. 

He appears to be living with Harry in Norfolk, where he gets himself a job as a GP. He doesn’t date, and largely doesn’t associate with anyone apart from his sister. Occasionally, he meets Lestrade at a pub for a pint. 

“He seems the same,” Lestrade says when Sherlock asks. “If I didn’t know any differently, I would assume that he was still at home with Mary and Alice. The only weird thing is, he asks me about cases. Wants to know if I’ve got anything on.”

“What do you tell him?” Sherlock asks.

“I tell him that I can’t help him. It’s bad enough I let you into my crime scenes.” Lestrade pauses. “Er - no offense, lad.”

“None taken.”

Sherlock comes back from the shops one evening to find Mary in the kitchen washing dishes while Alice plays in the other room. She pauses every few minutes to glance at her mobile.

“John?” Sherlock asks.

“He’s been texting me today,” Mary says.

“Why?”

“I don’t know.” Mary’s face is drawn and etched with sadness. “I think he’s drunk. He keeps telling me how sorry he is. How much he misses being at home with us. He… called me beautiful.”

Mary clears her throat and adds, “He hasn’t called me that in a very long time.”

“Does he want to talk?” Sherlock asks. An uncomfortable feeling has settled in his chest. He realises now that there’s a distinct possibility this could be the beginning of their end. He hadn’t actually thought that there might come a day when Alice and Mary move out, and it was an oversight for him not to have considered this. He knows he should be pleased if John and Mary reconcile.

“He hasn’t said,” Mary says. She drains the sink and dries her hands off. “I wouldn’t hold my breath.”

She settles on the sofa to watch television that night after putting Alice to bed. Sherlock joins her with his laptop, and he works on updating his website while Mary is engrossed in her programme. She rests her head on his shoulder at one point. Later on, she tucks chilled toes under his calves where his legs are resting on the ottoman. Her feet are slender and her toenails are bright pink this week. Mary paints them every week or two. The most creative design, Sherlock thinks, is the one she did to match the wallpaper in 221B. 

Mary is unnaturally quiet this evening, and she keeps glancing at her mobile out of the corner of her eye. It remains quiet. Sherlock wonders if she is doing the same thing he is now - remembering the John he knew; the John who became his best friend. The John who liked him well enough to consider _him_ his best friend. It seemed an eternity ago that Sherlock stood up at a wedding and pledged his undying love for the marrying couple. It was almost another lifetime, in fact. Sherlock can hardly believe that he is the same man; that any of them are the same people.

“What did I do wrong?” Mary asks suddenly. She’s still looking at the television, refusing to meet Sherlock’s gaze. “I must have done something wrong, to make him so… horrible.”

Sherlock doesn’t know what to say to that. Mary goes on.

“If he were here,” she says hollowly, “he’d tell me it was because I lied to him. Because I deceived him. Because I shot you. Because I had - I had the audacity to want to make a new life for myself, with the man I loved and the baby we had made. Because I wanted to put my past behind me, and just… _live_.”

Sherlock closes the lid of his laptop and sets it aside, and then he shifts so that his arm is around Mary’s shoulders. She leans against him. 

“No person can be held responsible for changing another,” he says at last. “John is who he is, regardless of what you did or didn’t do. He can blame you all he wants, but the true fault lies with him. For example, I have no one to blame for my cocaine addiction, or for the fact that I am now addicted to the stimulation of puzzles in lieu of doing drugs. I cannot blame anyone for the lapse I had during my two years away, much as I would enjoy pinning all of that on Moriarty. I relapsed, I started doing drugs again, and it felt _good_. The same thing is happening to John.”

“You were able to stop,” Mary points out. “If he can’t… it will have been my fault. He would have been so much better off if we hadn’t met.”

“No,” Sherlock says firmly. “You were there for him when I wasn’t. And you are probably the best thing that could have happened to him.”

He goes quiet, considering his next words. “And - _I_ am glad we met. You and me. That wouldn’t have been possible without John.”

“Even though I shot you?” Mary asks hollowly.

“I told you a long time ago that I forgave you for that,” Sherlock reprimands gently. “I don’t say things that I don’t mean.”

“Yes, you do.”

Sherlock snorts. “All right. Yes, I do. But not to you.”

\-----

Alice learns to walk by latching on to those who already can.

She becomes an expert at hauling herself to her feet using sturdy pieces of furniture, and once or twice is even able to push herself up unassisted. Her first few steps are stumbling and unsure, and more often than not she ends up tumbling over once again. But she is undeterred by these setbacks and very rarely cries. Sherlock is fascinated by her single-minded dedication; by the look of concentration that creases her soft face and the way she holds her tongue between her teeth when she tries very hard to accomplish something. 

Alice will grab on to Sherlock’s trouser leg if he happens to be nearby and will try to walk with him. She does the same thing to Mary, and it becomes a kind of joke between them that they have a stealth toddler in the flat, one who lies in wait until someone walks by her before lunging at them. Alice picks up on their laughter and giggles along with them, though surely she doesn’t know what’s so funny. All she knows is that her mother is happy, and so is Sherlock, and therefore she must be doing something right.

Sherlock takes Alice over to Lestrade’s house on the occasional Sunday, because usually Mary spends those days readying herself for a long week at the clinic. Lestrade has a dog, a shaggy beast of a thing named Baxter, and though he appears fearsome at the first glance, by the second it’s apparent that he is as harmless as one of Alice’s numerous stuffed animals.

Alice amuses herself on these visits with Baxter. She sits on the living room floor while Lestrade and Sherlock chat about cases and rolls balls to Baxter, who obliges her by picking the balls up in his mouth and delivering them back to her lap. Baxter, not as spry as he once was, spends a good deal of his time napping in a patch of sunlight when he isn’t retrieving balls from Alice, and sometimes she joins him. He’s a tolerant dog, and he puts up with Alice pulling on his hair and trying to climb on top of him when he’s lying on the rug. And Alice, ever resourceful when it comes to her quest to learn how to walk, learns that she can use Baxter in much the same way she uses the adults she lives with. She starts to hang on to his tail as he ambles about the house, stumbling along with him, and though it must not be comfortable, Baxter never snaps at her. 

Mary is in the kitchen one morning fixing a cup of coffee before work. Alice, who has been up for hours already, is in the living room playing with the dolls that seem to be perpetually strewn about the flat. No matter how many times Sherlock picks them up and puts them away, he always finds more. 

He sits on the floor in his pyjamas and dressing gown that morning, typing on his laptop while Alice plays on the floor and babbles to herself.

“Sher - ock!’ she says enthusiastically, holding up one of her dolls. He glances at her and gives a brief smile.

“Yes, I see. Very nice, Alice,” he says, and goes back to his work. 

“Sher - ock, here!” she says again.

“That’s all right, Alice, I can see,” he says absently. The kitchen door slides open.

“Oh, Sherlock, look,” Mary says suddenly, and he looks up again. Alice is standing on her own, albeit slightly unsteadily, and she’s holding out her toy to him. “Ally, go take your doll to him. Go on.”

Sherlock sets aside his laptop and holds out a hand. Alice grins at him and takes a wobbling step. And then she takes another, and another, and in moments she is across the room and in his arms. 

“Dolly,” she says happily, showing him the doll, and Sherlock gives a huff of laughter. 

“Yes, I see,” he says, kissing the top of her head. “Mary, did you get that?”

“I did,” Mary says, her voice thick. She pockets her mobile and swipes the heels of her hands under damp eyes. “My God, Sherlock, she’s _walking_.”

Sherlock lifts Alice up into Mary’s waiting arms and she hugs her daughter close, kissing her cheeks and telling her what a big girl she is. Alice seems flabbergasted by the attention, and after a moment she struggles to be put down again. Sherlock catches her hands in his and helps her to stand upright so that she can wave to Mary while on her feet. Mary, eyes still damp, leaves the flat with the kind of grin on her face Sherlock hasn’t seen since her wedding day.

\-----

This new life is far from easy.

Sometimes, Sherlock feels as though he’s taking to it naturally. Other times, he wants to tear out his hair and bellow. 

He can’t remember the last time he functioned for so many days on so little sleep, and wonders if he’ll ever get a proper night’s rest again. There are what seem like permanent bags under his eyes, and he has to go through multiple shirts in a day. Alice will mark his clothing one way or another, whether it’s with her food, her crayons, or with other bodily fluids. 

She’s a picky eater, and she dislikes eating anything that isn’t the pureed food they’ve been feeding her or the formula from her bottle. Mary insists, though, because it’s time they moved her on to various finger foods - carefully-sliced meat and scrambled eggs, among others. 

The problem is, it falls on Sherlock to feed Alice most of her meals, and it turns into an ordeal. He starts to dread lunchtime, because Alice howls and wails, and he can’t help but feel like he’s wronging her somehow. 

“Ally,” he implores one afternoon, resorting to Mary’s nickname for her daughter, “come on, you like bananas.”

He tries to get her to pick up the small slice of banana. She does, but then she hurls it across the kitchen and sobs harder. Sherlock pushes himself to his feet to clean the small mess she has made on the floor, leaving Alice to cry to herself in her highchair. 

“I’m awful at this, Victor,” he says aloud in frustration, running his hands through his hair. He rests his forehead against a nearby wall and closes his eyes, his heart constricting as Alice gives a tremulous, _“Mama!”_

_ No one said it was going to be easy, William,  _ Victor chastises gently. _Be easier on yourself. She’s not going to starve just because she didn’t finish her lunch. And maybe by the next meal she’ll be hungry enough to eat what you give her._

“She’s going to hate me.”

_ No.  _ He can almost see Victor’s gentle smile. _You’re the only father she’s ever going to know. She’s going to worship you. And you’re going to do right by her._

“You would do better,” Sherlock says quietly. He pinches the bridge of his nose and breathes for a moment. Then, he crosses the room and picks Alice up out of the highchair, wiping her tears away with the sleeve of his shirt. Alice starts to calm. 

_ But I’m not here, William.  _

And Sherlock, who is reminded of that each and every day, whispers, “I know.”

\-----

John occasionally texts Mary, and once he placed a drunken phone call to Sherlock. His messages usually aren’t coherent, and when they are, he is profusely apologetic.

It never comes to anything. John makes plans to meet up with Mary and then cancels at the last moment, and once Sherlock runs into him on the pavement outside Baker Street. They chat briefly and make plans to meet up at a pub at the end of the week, which never comes to pass. 

“I don’t understand what he wants,” Sherlock says in frustration when John texts to ask if they can put it off for another week. He says yes even though he knows John will cancel when the time comes. But Sherlock was never very good at denying John anything. It pained him to throw John out of Baker Street that one evening, and the only reason he was able to pull it off was because he was driven by unprecedented anger. But he misses his friend, misses the constancy of John’s companionship and the wisdom of his words. _John Watson, you keep me right,_ he had declared at the wedding, but he’s never before felt so lost and it’s all because of John.

“I don’t think even he knows what he wants,” Mary points out quietly. 

Sherlock hurls his mobile against the far wall. It hits with a satisfying _crack_ and then clatters to the floor. Upstairs, Alice gives a cry. Mary sighs and goes to retrieve the mobile.

“I lived for a year with a man who had a terrible temper,” she says, slapping the phone into Sherlock’s hand. “I won’t do it again. Go for a walk. Calm down. And if you do that again, we’re moving out.”

That threat is enough to stop him cold.

“Where would you go?” Sherlock asks when he can find his voice again. He has followed Mary upstairs, and she’s cradling Alice. “He’s not coming back. He’s not coming home.”

Mary has her back to him, and her shoulders stiffen. 

“I know,” she says finally. “I keep hoping…”

She trails off. 

“But I won’t stay here if you start to turn out like him,” she goes on. “I can’t go through that again.”

“I won’t,” Sherlock says softly. “I won’t become him.”

There had been a time when the greatest compliment anyone could have given him was to say that he was like John. Now, Sherlock wants the opposite. 

\-----

Alice turns one in March. 

Mrs Hudson bakes a cake - which ends up being more for the adults than for Alice, who simply wants to play with the frosting - and Sherlock is put in charge of wrapping presents. He had originally been assigned the task of picking out a few items for the baby, but Mary nixed all of his ideas and decided it was best if she did the purchasing while he wrapped the items. She doesn’t think to monitor this task, however, and Alice ends up with a pile of presents that are all wrapped in black paper with tiny white skulls on it. 

“I’m surprised her first word wasn’t _murder_ , with you as her godfather,” Mary says in exasperation, but she’s fighting a smile. 

Lestrade stops by after his shift, ostensibly with Alice’s present (wrapped tastefully in pink), but Sherlock can see that there’s something on his mind. They step out after Lestrade, at Mrs Hudson’s urging, eats a slice of the cake. 

“I want you to look into something for me,” Lestrade says, pulling out two cigarettes and lighting them both. He hands one to Sherlock and takes a long pull from his own. Sherlock is careful to stand upwind of Lestrade, in order to minimize how much he will reek of cigarettes when he goes back inside. “Unofficially.”

“Isn’t everything I do for you _unofficial_?” Sherlock asks, not that he particularly minds. He does what he does for the thrill of the chase and the stimulation of the puzzle; though he enjoys a good reveal, attention is not what he’s seeking, in the end. 

“I mean, I want you to look into something that the Met would have my head for showing to you. They don’t know I’m consulting you.” Lestrade’s lips quirk wryly. “Guess I’m going a bit rogue.”

Sherlock is intrigued at this. “And what is it you want me to look into?”

“We’re working a case at the moment. I can’t give you the exact details, but our victim was heavily into an underground drug network that seems to span most of London. We’ve been trying to tap into it for years; bring it down. But it seems to be much more far-reaching than I first envisioned.” Lestrade draws a deep breath, and adds, “And I think the Chief Superintendent is involved.”

“Morris?” Sherlock asks in surprise. Lestrade nods. 

“I need to know if it’s true,” he says. “Hell, I hope it’s not, but i don’t see what else it could be. And if it _is_ true, that’s going to spell hell on Earth for the rest of us. I don’t know how we’re going to go about bringing the drug network down if Morris is involved. We probably won’t even be able to close this case. And the implications of Morris being involved…”

Lestrade trails off.

“You want me to take him down,” Sherlock says. Lestrade looks torn.

“I want him stopped,” he says finally. “Of course I do. But I’m realistic enough to realise that probably won’t happen. If nothing else, I want to bring some justice to the victim’s family. He was one of our own. They deserve to have some peace, even if we never end up taking down the entirety of the drug network. If you can help out in any way, I’d be grateful.”

Sherlock spends the next week immersed in the case. Mrs Hudson takes Alice most days, because Sherlock needs to devote his full attention to the case, and he can’t do that if he is simultaneously caring for the child.

“Can you take her for the night?” Sherlock asks when he drops Alice off at Mrs Hudson’s on Friday afternoon. “I’m going to be gone for the night, and Mary is working late.”

Mrs Hudson tries to ask him where he’s going, but Sherlock ignores her. He is single-minded in his mission, and he makes straight for the home of the Chief Superintendent. Lestrade never would have considered doing this himself, which is probably why he asked Sherlock to look into the case. Whereas Lestrade has assumed that they will uncover evidence that will implicate the Chief in the course of their investigation of the victim, Sherlock believes it to be the other way around - the Chief’s involvement in the drug network will lead them to the killer, or at least the reason why the victim is dead. Sherlock can’t believe that it is a coincidence that an officer of the Met is dead while his Chief is involved in illegal doings - as Mycroft often said when they were children, the universe is rarely so lazy. 

It takes Sherlock half an hour to gather the evidence that he needs. He hacks into the Chief’s computer and accesses his bank accounts, where he takes screenshots of the various money transfers. There is a safe behind the Chief’s desk where he keeps a separate mobile, and the false bottom underneath his bed yields a laptop. Sherlock has only just broken the password, though, when the front door opens. This surprises him, as he had thought he’d safely assured that the Chief was out for the evening, and he hastily puts the laptop back and replaces the false bottom. 

His only escape route is cut off, and so he needs to improvise. With the Chief’s step on the stairs leading up to the second storey, Sherlock opens the bedroom window and climbs out. There is a roof just five feet below, and he drops down onto it before sliding down to the edge. He grabs hold of the gutter and swings down, dropping onto some shrubs that are growing under the kitchen window. The branches are uncomfortable and it takes him a moment to disentangle his shirt - and make sure that his mobile is still on him - but other than that, he is unharmed. 

Sherlock turns around, and something slams into the side of his head.

He goes down hard, with a cry of pain he doesn’t manage to stifle in time. Agony explodes across the side of his face, and he can feel that the skin has split and he is bleeding. His vision goes dark at the edges, and he fights to hold onto consciousness. He drags himself to his knees, and a blow lands across his mouth, splitting his lip. Though he can’t figure out what he was hit with at first, he knows that this second blow comes from a fist. 

And then suddenly his assailant is gone. Sherlock struggles to his feet and finds that the man who struck him is dead, felled by a bullet through the head, and the lead pipe he had struck Sherlock with has fallen from his hand. Sherlock then turns around at the sound of a _pop_ and discovers another body behind him, also male. For a moment he stands there, panting, searching the windows and the roofs of the nearby buildings.

He then recalls that the Chief Superintendent is in his house and has likely heard everything, and he has long since probably discovered the open window. Sherlock flees. 

Mary is tailing him. Sherlock recognises her in the cab behind the one he’s riding in, and anger flares in his chest.

“Sure you don’t want a hospital, mate?” the worried cab driver asks for the second time. Sherlock shakes his head, which causes it to throb further.

“No. Baker Street, like I said.”

He gets out when the cab pulls up to the kerb and tosses a fistful of bills through the window, not caring about the change. He doesn’t wait for Mary, and instead storms into the building. 

“What the devil were you thinking?” Sherlock snarls when he’s halfway up the steps to the flat. He hears the front door open and close behind him. 

“You’re welcome,” Mary says irritably. She follows him up the steps, two at a time, and they burst into 221B. 

“Oh, Sherlock, Mary, I was just about to call -”

“Yes, thank you, Mrs Hudson, goodbye,” Sherlock says, throwing the door open wide and ushering their landlady out. 

“Is Alice in bed?” Mary asks, calmer than Sherlock feels.

“Yes, dear. And she ate all her dinner, and she said that she wanted you to wake her up when you got home so she could say goodnight properly.”

“Of course she did,” Mary sighs. “Thank you, Martha.”

She kisses Mrs Hudson on the cheek and then shuts the door in her wake. 

“You could have been killed,” Sherlock says the moment that Mrs Hudson is gone. 

“Don’t shout, you’ll wake Alice,” Mary says in a fierce undertone. “And where the hell would you be if I hadn’t intervened? Dead, if not worse!”

“I can handle myself!”

“Yes, you were handling yourself _so well_ before I got there, which is why you’ve got a black eye and a split lip. And God knows _what_ they did to your ribs!”

“Nothing that twelve hours of sleep won’t cure,” Sherlock mutters under his breath. 

“You promised me this would stop,” Mary snaps. “You _promised_ , Sherlock! No more reckless cases, no more breakneck chases. No more serial killers, and no more drug cartels!”

“It’s this or cocaine,” Sherlock snarls at her. “Take your pick.”

Mary looks as though Sherlock has physically struck her. “And what about the third option?”

“What third option?”

“Alice,” Mary says brokenly, and Sherlock feels himself flinch. “ _Alice_ , Sherlock, who already has had one parent walk out of her life. Don’t make me explain to her why you’re gone, too.”

Mary turns on her heel and leaves the room, slamming the bedroom door behind her. Sherlock wishes she had actually struck him instead. 

His ribs keep him from sleeping that night. Once, going to John would have been an option. Now, Sherlock is limited either to A&E or to Lestrade, who patched him up and sent him on his way in the days before John but after Victor. He hasn’t been to A&E since he was a child, and he doesn’t like to think what Lestrade’s reaction would be if Sherlock woke him at two in the morning. He’d probably get skinned alive - or at least verbally flayed. 

And then he would have to explain not only what he was doing out in the dead of night, but how he had come by his injuries in the first place, and where his unlikely saviour had come from. Lestrade knows that Mary and Alice are staying at 221B until John comes home; what he doesn’t know - or what he doesn’t realise - is that this will never happen. What he doesn’t know is that Sherlock can no longer say that Mary is just a flatmate. What he doesn’t know is that this was never about Sherlock risking his life, or Mary risking hers. It’s not even about Alice.

It’s about the fact that Sherlock can no longer picture his life without either of them; that Mary and Alice have become as necessary to his continued existence as the air itself. 

Mary is still awake when Sherlock eases open the bedroom door. He can see the glimmer of her eyes in the moment before he shuts the door behind him, shutting out the sliver of light from the hallway. 

The bedroom is virtually unchanged as far as the furniture goes, but there is an unfamiliar scent in the air now. Mary’s perfume, mixed with her shampoo and deodorant, and the faint scent of bedclothes that have been slept in for several nights in a row. Sherlock navigates over to the bed in the darkness. He slides under the bedclothes on the unoccupied half of the mattress and lies there quietly, listening to Mary breathe. She doesn’t ask him to leave, but she doesn’t look at him, either. Her back is still to him, and he reaches out and lays a hand between her shoulder blades. 

“I’m sorry,” he says quietly.

“Fibbing, Sherlock,” she replies. Her words are thick; she’s been crying. Or suppressing tears - when he touches her cheek, his hand comes away dry. 

And no, he isn’t sorry, not truly. He can’t be sorry for the work that keeps his mind busy; the puzzles that keep away the tedium. He can’t be sorry for the thrill of the chase or the exhilaration of the hot blood pumping through his veins. But if it will keep them in his life, he will say the words over and over until his voice gives out. 

But that might not be enough, and so he settles for the closest thing to the truth that he can muster: “Don’t go.”

He hears Mary turn, glancing at him over her shoulder.

“Go?” she asks. “Where would I go?”

“I don’t know,” he answers. “Just - don’t leave. I don’t want that.”

After a moment, Mary says, “This is Alice’s home. I have no intention of removing her. I couldn’t do that.”

She rolls over then to face him, and adds, “And it’s my home, too. I’m not leaving you. I just wish you’d be more careful.”

He kisses her forehead, and they fall asleep together shortly afterward.


	3. Chapter 3

“So what is it that’s going on between the two of you?” Lestrade asks one afternoon between bites of his lunch. Sherlock picks at his container of beef and grimaces. “Between you and Mary.”

“Yes, I figured that’s what you meant without the qualifier,” Sherlock says dryly. “Nothing.”

He knows it’s not convincing, even before Lestrade snorts and says, “Bullshit.”

Sherlock sighs. “She needs help with the baby. I’m her godfather. It makes sense.”

“I don’t think John’s going to appreciate you making a move on Mary while he’s… figuring stuff out,” Lestrade says, as delicately as he can manage.

“I’m doing nothing of the sort,” Sherlock says contemptuously. “Mary is… a friend. I’m merely looking after her and Alice until…”

He trails off, waving a hand vaguely. He’s killed for Mary, to keep her safe. There is nothing, in fact, that he would not do to protect her and Alice.

“And if John doesn’t come back?” Lestrade asks, voicing the concern Sherlock and Mary don’t talk about.

Sherlock pokes absently at his food.

“He’s not going to,” he admits finally. It still hurts to say out loud.

“You don’t honestly think he’d abandon his wife and child,” Lestrade says.

Sherlock says nothing to that, because each and every day it becomes more and more clear that there are things about John that he never even suspected. He has always known that John is an addict, though violence is his drug of choice. He went to war because he needed that fix, and upon being invalided home he found a different sort of battlefield. Sherlock allowed him access to the drug he so desperately needed, and Sherlock knew exactly what he was providing John.

And John wanted so desperately to be _normal_ , to want the things that ordinary people wanted, that he found Mary and fell in love - Sherlock has no doubt that his feelings were genuine. And Mary is what John needed; the type of person who could understand his impulses, because she had also thrived on the battlefield, even if the backdrop wasn’t a war.

But John couldn’t be the person he thought he should be, whereas Mary thrived in this new adventure she had embarked on. Parenthood, and a normal life away from danger, is apparently all Mary needed. For John, it appears to have been smothering.

“Yes,” Sherlock says finally. “I do think he would. And he has.”

\-----

Mary’s past is something they don’t discuss.

Given her former ties to the CIA, Sherlock surmises that she’s American. This is further solidified by the fact that occasionally, when she’s very tired, the slightest trace of an American accent will tint her vowels. But Mary doesn’t offer any additional information, and there’s very little Sherlock can deduce about her past. He almost wishes he had read that USB stick before John tossed it into the fire.

Then again, it’s probably one of the few good memories Mary has of John - his initial, unconditional acceptance of her - and so Sherlock finds he can’t fault his former flatmate too much for tossing away all of that information.

It only comes up in conversation once, while Sherlock is working on a case of a man who appears to have been killed by a hit man.

“Is there anyone who might come after you?” he asks Mary one night.

“I could name you half a dozen people who want me dead,” Mary says. She looks up from her laptop and adds, “But they aren’t going to find me.”

“Right,” Sherlock says, unconvinced. Mary goes back to her work.

“I had my appearance altered slightly - nose, chin, ears. Profiling technology can’t recognise me now; it’s been tested. And the people who want me dead have more important things to worry about at the moment. My wrongs are terrible, but they are years in the past.”

“Would you bet Alice’s life on it?”

Mary gives him a harsh look. “Yes.”

“You’re certain?”

“Sherlock, if for one _moment_ I thought that I was a threat to my own daughter, I wouldn’t be here right now,” Mary says fiercely. “I would have handed her over to her godfather and fled. Alice is safe. I’d bet both our lives on it.”

Sherlock drops he subject after that.

\-----

Alice starts to call Sherlock _Dada_.

It takes them several weeks to dissuade her from it, and eventually she settles on a butchered form of his name. She becomes a regular fixture at the Yard, because there are only so many times Sherlock can ask Mrs Hudson to babysit an active one-year-old. Now that she’s walking - stumbling - she gets into everything, and Sherlock spends more time running after her than he does working on cases.

He finds that he doesn’t mind as much as he thought he would.

Mary childproofs the kitchen and the living room. Sherlock takes an afternoon to childproof the rest of the building, from Mary’s bedroom to the bathroom to Mrs Hudson’s kitchen and living room.

Sherlock, after that initial night with Mary, goes back to sleeping on the sofa. But there has been a shift in their dynamic, now. He finds himself occasionally touching her arm or shoulder, and their fingers brush now when Mary hands him a cup of coffee in the morning. She kisses his cheek when she leaves the flat for work in the morning and, once, upon returning from a midnight shift at the clinic, she settled on Sherlock in his oversized chair instead of taking her customary seat on the sofa.

“How old was he?” Sherlock asks, closing his book one-handed and marking his page with a finger. He shifts so that she’s settled more fully on his lap and wraps his free arm around her back. Mary rests her head on his collarbone and closes her eyes.

“Four,” she says quietly. “Had these nasty bruises on his back. The mother tried to explain them away.”

“Did you report it?”

“Of course.”

Sherlock rests his cheek against the top of her head. “That’s all you could have done.”

“Not really,” Mary says, an edge to her voice, and Sherlock tightens the arm he has around her.

“You can’t go after them.”

“You trust the law to get them?”

“I have to, in this instance. I won’t risk you getting caught.”

Mary is quiet for a time. And then she says, “If anything ever happens to me - you mustn’t let them take Alice away. I don’t want her raised by strangers, or - or worse.”

“Wouldn’t I be considered _worse_?” Sherlock asks dryly, though his heart seems to stumble in his chest.

“No,” Mary says, very seriously. “I think you’re the best thing that could have ever happened to her.”

Sherlock can’t say he’s nearly as convinced of this as Mary is. Over the next several weeks, Alice earns her fair share of bumps and bruises, and nearly always when Sherlock is supposed to be watching her. The worst comes when Mary is in the shower one morning and Alice falls in the living room, hitting her head on the side of the table on the way down. Mary emerges from the bathroom wrapped in a dressing gown, drawn by her daughter’s screams, to find Sherlock frantically trying to both soothe the child and check her over for permanent injury.

“She’s fine,” Mary has to reassure him repeatedly. Her nurse’s training kicks in, and she swiftly checks her daughter over whilst absently making hushing sounds. Alice quiets under her mother’s ministrations, and Mary transfers her to Sherlock’s arms despite his feeble protests. “Children fall, Sherlock. They get hurt. It’s all right. She’s fine, and it’s not your fault.”

Mary brings the paperwork home the next day, though it sits untouched on Sherlock’s desk for nearly two weeks. Finally, one afternoon Alice falls asleep in his arms, one of her hands wrapped around his finger. She’s grown so much since that day sixteen months ago when she was brought into this world, a baby so tiny that she didn’t even reach his elbow when he held her head in his palm. Now, she is a heavy weight in the crook of his arm, and growing more every day.

And so, with Alice snuggled in the safety of his arms, Sherlock signs the guardianship papers.

\------

John goes to Norfolk, and then to Dublin. Sherlock loses track of him for a time, but three weeks later he resurfaces again in Paris.

He returns to London at the end of September, and that’s where he dies.

Sherlock, when he retells the story, prefers to say that he had seen it coming. That he had known, when the doorbell rang that afternoon, what news Mycroft was bringing them. But the truth is, he doesn’t suspect anything out of the ordinary when Mycroft steps into the flat that rainy autumn afternoon. It’s a blow he isn’t prepared for.

“How did it happen?” he asks finally. His words don’t sound like his own.

“Car accident,” Mycroft says.

“Suicide?” Sherlock hates that he has to ask. Mycroft shakes his head.

“It doesn’t appear so.”

Alice is eighteen months old when they bury her father. She doesn’t understand why she needs to wear the tasteful black and green dress and the fancy shoes, and she doesn’t know that the box they lower into the ground contains her father’s broken body. She doesn’t understand why Sherlock holds her so close, or why her mother keeps fighting back tears.

Afterwards, Mary chats for a while with Harry. Sherlock can’t bring himself to even pretend to want to talk to people, and so he paces away from the dwindling crowd. He ducks around the thick trunk of an oak several yards away and pulls out a packet of cigarettes. It’s unopened, an emergency pack that he’s carried around with him for the past year. Sherlock breaks the seal and pulls out a cigarette, and he leans back against the trunk as he lights up.

“Wasn’t easy, was it?” Lestrade appears around the other side of the tree, and Sherlock fights irritation. “Loving him. I mean - not in that way, but as a friend. He _was_ your best friend -”

“I know what you mean,” Sherlock says shortly, cutting him off. “And no, it wasn’t quite what I expected. This isn’t how I imagined it would end.”

“It’s a bitch of a thing,” Lestrade says sympathetically. He lifts a cigarette off Sherlock and lights it with his own lighter. “I’m sorry, lad.”

Sherlock grunts, and they finish smoking in silence.

Mary and Sherlock return to Baker Street when it’s all over, and Mary goes to bed. Sherlock feeds Alice and plays with her on the rug in the living room. And then he lets her watch television, which is a treat normally reserved for the weekends. She falls asleep on his lap without him having to read her a story, and he’s able to tuck her into bed without her waking up.

Mary tries to conceal that she’s been crying, but the mattress trembles with the effort it takes her to try to remain composed. Sherlock slides under the bedclothes like he did all those weeks ago, but this time he drapes an arm around her waist and draws her close.

They lay there, back-to-chest, for an indeterminate amount of time. Mary’s shoulders shake, and Sherlock can feel that his own cheeks are damp. He presses his face into the back of Mary’s shoulder, and his own tears quickly soak through the soft fabric of her t-shirt. They lost John long before this night, he knows, but it hurts all the same. Now, there is no longer any chance that the best friend he knew will suddenly make a reappearance.

He isn’t sure which of them falls asleep first, or when it happens, but he wakes in the early morning hours to discover that Mary is still at his side, and that they have rolled together during the night. She is facing him now, her head tucked just under his chin. One of her hands grips his t-shirt; the other is curled into a loose fist and rests against her chest.

The blankets have become tangled around them, and it takes Sherlock several minutes to carefully extract himself and then Mary without waking her. He then rearranges the blankets around their bodies and falls asleep again.

They wake with the dawn, Sherlock on his back this time while Mary’s head rests on his shoulder. She wakes slowly, blinking sleepily, and regards him through bleary eyes.

“Hello,” she whispers.

“Morning,” Sherlock says. “Alright?”

She nods, and reaches for his hand.

They take to sharing a bed after that.

Sherlock knows it’s unusual for two people who don’t have sex to share a bed in this manner, but he has never done things the usual way. Then again, the only other person he ever shared a bed with was Victor, and the two of them had actually been intimate in the way that he and Mary are not.

But he doesn’t think about it much beyond that, and neither, it seems, does Mary. He moves back into his bedroom and they spend most nights together, unless Sherlock is up late with an experiment or a case. Usually, in that case he will sleep on the sofa so as not to disturb Mary.

They rise around the same time in the morning and generally turn in together. Sometimes, Mary will read in bed; other times, Sherlock will work on his laptop while Mary slumbers beside him. It all occurs naturally, and it doesn’t feel odd. Occasionally, it occurs to Sherlock that arrangements like this simply aren’t done, but there’s no one else that needs to know about it.

\-----

Christmas is slightly a more tolerable holiday now that Mary and Alice are living in the flat.

Sherlock never had use for it before. Prior to last year, it was a holiday he was supposed to either endure with his mother and Mycroft or one - after Victor’s death - that he spent alone, trying to ignore the joy that had no purpose for him. What was there to celebrate about making it halfway through the winter? There were still endless months of dark and cold ahead, and January and February were always worse than December.

But last year had been Alice’s first Christmas, and the holiday revolved entirely around her. Sherlock had found that not only tolerable, but almost enjoyable. The little girl had lit up with joy at all of the lights, decorations, and tinsel, and watching her tear through her presents with enthusiasm was an experience to behold.

This year, Sherlock and Mary celebrate alone with Alice. Mary has no family, of course, and Sherlock has no family he wishes to acknowledge apart from the two people currently living under his roof. Well, with the exception of Lestrade, but he’s spending the holiday this year with his ex-wife and daughters.

Alice opens her presents with great enthusiasm, and she’s having so much fun with them that they allow her to stay up almost two hours past her bedtime. She eventually falls asleep on Mary’s lap, and Mary tucks her in before starting to get ready for the midnight church service.

Mary, Sherlock has discovered, has religious leanings that he didn’t pick up on during their first few meetings. She doesn’t adhere strictly to any religious teachings by any means, but she has inclinations. Sometimes he catches her praying; occasionally she will walk up the street on Sunday morning to attend the noon church service. It’s not very often, and the only discussion they’ve had regarding it was two nights ago. Mary wanted to know if Sherlock wished to accompany her, likely already knowing the answer, which was no. She doesn’t let it faze her. She showers and dresses. While she’s in the bedroom, Sherlock takes a quick shower in order to wash off the dregs of the day.

“Mirror?” Mary calls through the door.

“Go for it,” Sherlock answers as he washes the suds out of his hair. She opens the bathroom door, and Sherlock can hear her getting out her makeup supplies.

He finishes his shower and sticks his hand out around the curtain to grab a nearby towel. He dries off briskly and then steps out of the shower with the towel secured around his waist. Mary is applying lipstick, and she regards her reflection carefully in the bathroom mirror.

“You look presentable,” Sherlock says. Mary makes a face at him in the mirror.

“Yes, that’s exactly what I was going for,” she says dryly. She packs her makeup supplies back into the small floral bag and puts it back in the cabinet. She then turns to face him and opens her mouth to say something, but stops when her gaze is drawn suddenly to his torso. Sherlock looks down.

“Ah,” he says. “I suppose you haven’t seen it before.”

Mary reaches out a hand and touches the red, knotted flesh just below Sherlock’s sternum, the remnants of the wound left behind when she shot him two years ago.

“No,” Mary says softly. “I haven’t.”

Sherlock curls his hand around hers where it rests on his chest.

“You didn’t kill me,” he says.

“I certainly wasn’t attempting to,” Mary says. “Your heart still stopped.”

“But my brain activity did not. I wasn’t dead. You know that, as a nurse.”

Mary gives a jerky nod. Her face is a mask of sorrow. “I should have let you help me.”

“You did what you thought you needed to at the time. I don’t blame you for it.” Sherlock brings her hand to his lips and kisses her fingers. He then releases her. “I need to shave.”

“Quite right.” Mary smooths a hand down the front of her shirt and gives him a tentative smile. She kisses his cheek and says, “I’ll see you later. Happy Christmas.”

Sherlock catches her hand and gives it a squeeze just before she departs. “Happy Christmas.”

\-----

Sherlock wakes in the middle of the night to pinpricks shooting down his arm, and for a moment he thinks this is what woke him. He carefully maneuvers his arm out from under Mary’s body and flexes his fingers, wincing as circulation returns to the limb.

And then he hears the creak.

Mary hears it, too, and she snaps awake as Sherlock sits up. They share a look in the darkness, and Sherlock motions Mary to the bedside table. She retrieves the gun he keeps there while Sherlock reaches for the lead pipe he keeps under the bed.

They had left the bedroom door open, and they pad quietly into the kitchen. There are no lights on, and no signs of movement, but Sherlock knows that what he heard was unusual. It wasn’t the old building making its usual nighttime sounds. This was something else entirely.

He presses himself up against the wall next to the door in the living room, and Mary positions herself on the other side. She nods, and Sherlock throws open the door. Mary steps through, gun at the ready, and does a quick sweep of the staircase and landing. It’s clear, and she waves him through.

Upstairs, there is a muffled cry, and they throw caution to the wind. They both bolt upstairs to Alice’s room. Sherlock reaches the door first and throws it open. Mary doesn’t hesitate. She fires one shot at the shadowy figure by Alice’s crib, quick and efficient, and the man crumples. Sherlock finds another standing just behind the door, and he brings the pipe crashing down on the intruder’s head.

For a moment, the silence is broken only by their heavy breathing. Alice seems to have been shocked into silence. But when Sherlock turns on the lights, she starts to wail, and Mary tosses aside the gun to go to her side.

“Who are they?” Mary asks finally.

Sherlock kneels beside the man he knocked out and pulls off his ski mask. Recognition is instant, and it floods his stomach with cold. For one dizzying moment, he fears that he might be ill. Then, anger sets in.

“I don’t know,” he lies, and he pulls his mobile out of his dressing gown to call Lestrade.

“Fibbing,” Mary snaps. Sherlock ignores her, sacrificing addressing her concerns for talking to Lestrade.

The flat is soon overrun with police officers and paramedics. The two intruders are taken away in an ambulance, one with a concussion and the other with a non-fatal gunshot wound to the shoulder. Lestrade interviews Sherlock and Mary separately, and he produces a handkerchief for Alice’s tears. The baby no longer audibly cries, but tears leak out of her eyes and streak down her face, and she regards the chaos around her through miserable eyes.

Finally, it is just the four of them in the kitchen. Mary hasn’t spoken a word to Sherlock since the first responders arrived, and that stony silence continues now. Even Lestrade picks up on it, and he tries to provide a salve for the wound.

“It’s not his fault,” he tells Mary gently. “We’ve been trying to catch these men for years; we suspect they’re involved in human trafficking. Half a dozen disappearances have been linked to them. In the past couple of years, their victims have only been children. That’s when I called Sherlock in, to give this case a fresh pair of eyes.”

“And you took the case,” Mary snaps. Sherlock frowns, perplexed.

“It doesn’t infringe upon my promise,” he says. “I was hardly out there ‘risking my neck.’ I merely started making discreet inquiries.”

“Evidently, not discreet enough,” Mary says harshly. She looks at Lestrade. “Thank you, Greg. Let us know if you need anything else from us regarding what happened tonight. But Sherlock will not be working this case anymore.”

It takes them nearly two hours to get Alice to sleep again. Sherlock reads her a storybook about anthropomorphic bears five times before Alice lets him switch to a different book, and Mary bounces her gently in her arms. They bring down some of her toys from upstairs and her favourite blanket, and they try to soothe her in the downstairs bedroom. Alice calms down once she realises that she will not be taken upstairs and forced to sleep up there alone after her ordeal, and she eventually nods off.

Sherlock’s head is pounding from all the excitement - it was an adrenaline rush, and not a pleasant one at that - and so he takes a couple of paracematol. He wants to sleep, but one look at Mary tells him that she is neither tired nor about to let him off the hook for what happened tonight.

“I don’t know what I’ve done wrong,” Sherlock says, hoping that by admitting his ignorance from the first he will be able to avoid the worst of her anger. “I thought you might be glad that I’m looking into a case where children’s lives have been endangered.”

“Not when there was a chance that the perpetrators could retaliate and attack the child you have living under your roof,” Mary says. She’s retreated to the kitchen so that they don’t wake Alice, and Sherlock follows.

“What is it you want from me?” Sherlock asks, bewilderment starting to be replaced by irritation. “I can’t predict what case will be dangerous and which one will not! There is some inherent danger in everything I do. I have enough experience to know which cases are more risky than others, and I have declined the most dangerous ones.”

“You wanted us to move here,” Mary says angrily. “ _You_ brought us into this flat. And now you’re telling me that Alice is in more danger now than when she was living with a man who was addicted to violence?”

She turns away from him and passes a hand over her face.

“I did what you asked,” Sherlock says, feeling helpless and hating it. “I’ve worked to minimize the risks to myself, and by extension, the two of you. Do you want me to give it up altogether?”

It takes everything he has to force out the last question. If she says yes, he has no idea what he will do. He cannot function without the cases, but he fears that he cannot live without Mary and Alice. They are as much a part of him now as his own limbs.

Mary sighs. “I can’t ask that of you. I never would dream of it.”

“Then what is it?”

Silence meets his question.

“I wasn’t enough to keep John’s addiction at bay, and it eventually destroyed him. And us,” Mary says finally, quietly. “I’m not sure I’m enough to keep yours away, either.”

“I’m not John,” Sherlock says, and he only realises then how much pride he takes in that.

Mary considers him for a long moment.

“No,” she says finally. “You’re not.”

The unspoken sentence sits heavily between them: _And maybe that will be enough._

\-----

Alice turns two with little fanfare.

This is an unremarkable milestone, and she isn’t yet at the age where she can grasp the significance of birthdays. There is a small cake and presents, and for a while they get her to wear a party hat. Sherlock takes a photo that he texts to Greg and Molly, who send their best wishes to the birthday girl. Alice basks in the attention and wears herself out long before her usual bedtime. She falls asleep in the bed next to Mary, who quickly follows. They’re still asleep three hours later, when Sherlock turns in for the night.

Mary rouses when he crawls carefully into the bed behind her, and she sighs when he presses up against her from behind and wraps an arm around her waist.

“Do you want to take her upstairs?” he asks in an undertone. Mary shakes her head.

“No. Let her stay for tonight.” Mary settles down on the pillow again, turning her eyes on her daughter. She reaches out and runs the back of her finger down Alice’s cheek. “She’s beautiful, isn’t she?”

_Of course she is - she looks like you,_ Sherlock thinks. And, as Mary is falling asleep, he presses his lips to her cheek in a gentle kiss.

Some days later, Mary is playing with Alice on the floor of the living room while Sherlock conducts and experiment in the kitchen.

“Have you ever had anyone?” Mary asks abruptly, and Sherlock’s hand slips. He burns himself, curses under his breath, and runs his finger under the tap. It takes him a moment to realise that Mary doesn’t mean it in the same manner that Irene Adler did.

“No,” he lies.

“Never? No boyfriends or - or girlfriends?”

“No,” he says. Mary is quiet for a moment.

“You’ve never had sex,” she says finally.

“I have,” Sherlock says. “That’s different from having someone, though. Why the sudden curiosity?”

“No reason,” Mary says. “I’ve known you for three years now, but there’s still so much I don’t know _about_ you.”

“I assure you, my sex life is far from interesting,” Sherlock says dryly, though his heart is hammering uncomfortably against the inside of his ribcage. "Or lack thereof, as the case may be."

“When was the last time you were with someone?”

Sherlock pretends to think about it.

“Er - I was twenty-four, I think,” he says, though of course he remembers the date exactly. It was the morning of the awful day when his world was ripped away from him. The last time he was intimate with anyone was the last day Victor was alive, and there was nothing ominous about that quiet morning in bed. Certainly nothing that alluded to the horrendous evening that would follow.

“That’s a long time,” Mary observes. Sherlock shrugs.

“Sex isn’t really my… thing,” he says finally, and that part at least is the truth. He doesn't often feel desire, and his sexual urges are nearly non-existent. 

“John told me that when you two first met, he thought you were gay.”

“And that was surprisingly perceptive of him,” Sherlock says dryly. “We never discussed it. But yes, I tend to prefer men, both romantically and aesthetically. And sexually, I suppose, though that doesn't usually factor into the equation.”

What he doesn’t mention is that Victor was his only sexual partner. Sherlock never had any interest in anyone else, before or since.

\-----

Sherlock doesn’t often get out of the flat now that he has Alice to look after. He never gave it much thought before, and there were times when he went entire days without seeing or talking to another person.

But now that he can’t pick up and leave whenever he wants to, Sherlock notices the isolation.

Lestrade comes to his rescue on occasion. They’re walking through the park on this afternoon, Lestrade holding Baxter on a leash while Sherlock pushes Alice’s pushchair. He’s changed out of his customary dress shirts and trousers, opting for jeans and Victor’s old Cambridge sweatshirt instead. He wears sunglasses as well, and though it isn’t much of a disguise, it’s effective. The public has formed their opinion of what he is supposed to look like - Belstaff coat, scarf, and deerstalker on occasion. He can usually go out and not be recognised if he dresses casually.

Alice was determined to walk on her own when they first started out, and so they stroll along slowly to accommodate her pace. She keeps one hand on the side of the pushchair, and she babbles happily about all of the different sights. A butterfly flits by, and she tries to catch it. Later on, a flock of birds passes overhead, and she stops in her tracks to point them out.

She begins to tire, though, and eventually Sherlock lifts her back into the pushchair.

“No,” she says plaintively as he straps her in.

“Yes,” he says. He adjusts her purple hat and then makes sure the shade of the pushchair is pulled properly to shield her from the sun. He then leans in and kisses her cheek before straightening. “Just for a little while.”

“Oh, you have a beautiful daughter.”

Sherlock turns around to see a young woman regarding him and Lestrade happily. She’s paused in the middle of her run, and Baxter sniffs her hand, his tail wagging. She pets him absently.

“She’s not my daughter,” Sherlock and Lestrade say in unison. The woman’s smile falters. Perplexed, she continues on her way. Lestrade starts laughing first.

“Her _face_!” he says between chuckles. “She probably thinks we kidnapped Alice.”

“We’d be the worst kidnappers in the world,” Sherlock points out, but then he laughs as well.

They settle on a bench, and Lestrade lets Baxter off his leash. Alice sits between them, and she tosses the ball Lestrade hands her for Baxter. She can’t throw very far, but Lestrade cheers her on as though she has the arm of an athlete. Even Baxter seems like he makes a big show of tearing off after the ball, as though he’s finally met his match when it comes to fetch. He brings the ball back each time and dumps it in Alice’s lap, and they begin again.

“So how are things?” Lestrade asks as they watch the game between child and dog.

“Fine.”

“Half-expected you to be sleeping on the sofa after the almost-kidnapping debacle.”

Sherlock snorts. “It was close.”

And then he pauses, considering. “How did you know I wasn’t already sleeping on the sofa?”

Lestrade gives him a look. “You two share a bed. I’m not that much of an idiot, Sherlock.”

“Well -”

“Sherlock,” Lestrade says in exasperation. Sherlock smirks.

“We’re not sleeping together,” he says. “Well - we _are_. But there’s no sex.”

“Strange arrangement you’ve got there,” Lestrade admits. “Does she know about Victor?”

Sherlock shakes his head wordlessly.

“You ought to tell her, mate.”

“Maybe,” Sherlock says.

Silence stretches between them.

“You’re wrong, you know,” Lestrade says suddenly. He’s not looking at Sherlock, instead watching Baxter chase after the ball. “She _is_ your daughter.”

“I’m not her father,” Sherlock says.

“It doesn’t matter that your blood doesn’t flow through her veins,” Lestrade says. “You’re bearing witness to her _life_ , Sherlock. That means more.”

It’s a rare moment of insight from Lestrade, who doesn’t normally speak so eloquently - or consider matters so deeply. Sherlock swallows hard. Alice turns her face up to look at him, her eyes bright behind her light sunglasses and her purple hat sitting jauntily on her head.

“Up,” she demands, holding out her arms to him, and Sherlock obligingly lifts her onto his shoulders. Alice squeals happily. Lestrade squeezes his shoulder, and Sherlock fights down a terrifying, exhilarating emotion he doesn’t dare try to hope for, let alone name.


	4. Chapter 4

There’s an undeniable beauty in Mary.

Sherlock knows that she isn’t what is considered conventionally attractive, but there is still something striking about her. Her cheekbones are high and her lips are full and red. Her hair falls in blonde waves about her face. Sometimes, when she pins it back, loose strands of hair will fall loose and frame her face; when the light hits it, she practically glows. Her soft blue eyes light from within whenever she smiles, and her joy is often infectious.

There’s a hard edge behind the outward softness, and Sherlock finds this appealing. Mary is small and compact, and there’s not a bit of fat on her trim body. She keeps herself in shape, and her arms are well-defined while her stomach is taut. Sherlock has never seen her completely naked, but he surmises that powerful thighs are concealed by Mary’s trousers. If it came to a physical confrontation, they would be well-matched.

Mary is lying on her back one evening, holding a book with one hand while her other rests on Sherlock’s head. He’s settled his head on her stomach, and he dozes while she cards fingers through his hair.

“Another few minutes and you’ll be purring,” Mary observes in amusement.

“Mm. No, don’t stop.”

“Too bad,” Mary says. Her hand leaves his head, and he groans. He hears her bookmark her page and then turn off the light. “Come on, you big oaf. Up. I need to sleep.”

Sherlock reluctantly lifts his head off her stomach, but instead of moving over to his side of the bed, he leans down and kisses Mary instead.

It’s nothing like kissing a man - like kissing Victor. There is no rasp of ever-present stubble, and whereas Victor always tasted of mint and tea, Mary’s mouth is sweet. She brings a slender hand to the side of his neck, and though at first she froze in surprise, now she kisses him back with equal fervor. He parts her lips and deepens the kiss, and Mary’s other hand cradles the back of his head.

Sherlock pulls away, though not far. Mary’s hands cup his face, and in the semi-darkness he can see her eyes are bright. Her lips are slightly parted and she’s short of breath, and she appears at a loss for words.

“What,” she whispers finally, “was that?”

Sherlock closes his eyes and presses his forehead to Mary’s. He breathes in the cotton-fresh scent of her pyjamas and the strawberries on her breath, and fights down the confusion that roils in his chest. It’s not desire that drives him, that he knows, for there is no fire in his belly and his cock is flaccid; unstirred. But this need to be close to Mary, to _know_ Mary, sits heavy in his chest. He wants to map her with lips and tongue and fingers; he wants to mold himself to her, as close as two people can possibly get. He wants to see what only a few others have had chance to; he wants to take her apart and watch as she comes undone around him.

He recognises it as the slow burn that drove his relationship with Victor; that need to understand what will never be fully explained. Mary will always be a mystery to him, will always surprise him, and he could spend the rest of his life trying to figure her out. He welcomes the challenge.

Sherlock rests his hand on Mary’s hip, covering the gap between the hem of her t-shirt and the top of her pyjama bottoms. He brushes a thumb across her soft flesh and feels her breath hitch. But she doesn’t pull away, and after a moment he pushes up her shirt to expose her stomach. He trails his fingers over the slight ridges and valleys, the scar that marks her as a mother the only imperfection on the flat plane of flawless skin. Sherlock pushes his hand up higher, under her shirt, and cups one of her breasts.

Mary swallows a strangled noise. Sherlock ducks his head and kisses the side of her throat; presses his tongue against the pulse-point just under her jaw while his fingers work her nipple into a hard nub. Mary turns her head, mouth seeking his again, and they break apart only long enough for him to tug the shirt over her head and off.

Sherlock loses track of time, loses track of himself somewhere in the valley between Mary’s breasts and the soft hollow of her throat. He trails kisses over what feels like every inch of her skin, from her face to her throat to her collarbone to her chest. She gasps and arches her back when he takes a nipple into his mouth, working at the swollen nub with his teeth. Sherlock works his way down her body, dropping kisses on the smooth skin, focusing his attentions for several extra moments on the ragged scar that brought Alice into the world.

And then he’s kneeling between her legs, a hand on her hip while the other one smooths up her thigh. It occurs to him then that the last time he was in this position, it was the morning of the day Victor died. The last time he brushed a hand over the front of cotton pyjama bottoms, he palmed a prominent bulge instead of the slight curve between Mary’s legs.

Mary’s foot brushes against his side, and he looks up, meeting her wary gaze in the darkness.

“Sherlock?” she asks in a husky voice, concerned despite her obvious arousal.

“It’s been a while,” Sherlock says by way of apology, flashing her a wry grin. He moves his hands to her hips. “But I used to be quite good at this.”

Mary squirms. “I - uh - think the mechanics are rather different.”

Sherlock feels a wicked smile snake across his face.

“Well,” he purrs, “I’m betting the technique is adaptable. Let’s find out, shall we?”

He slides his fingers into the waistband of her pyjama bottoms and pulls them off.

\-----

For a few months, Sherlock is able to avoid defining what it is he and Mary now are to one another.

He likes to think that nothing has changed, and for the most part, this is true. They still share a bed and sleep side-by-side. They rise together and retire together, and Mary goes to work while Sherlock watches Alice at the flat. Sherlock still takes on the occasional case, and every other Sunday he goes over to Lestrade’s for lunch.

But in many ways, things are different now. They kiss - chastely during the light of day, not-so-chastely when in bed. The kiss becomes a greeting, a farewell, and an affirmation. It’s only done when the two of them are alone, and it feels as natural as breathing. Under darkness and under covers, Sherlock has taken Mary apart with fingers and tongue; has felt her grow wet at the touch of his hand and watched her shudder through a multitude of orgasms. She knows that he has no desire to be touched in return, and refrains from allowing her hands to wander below his waist. Sometimes, he wishes he could offer that to her the way he could Victor, but he can’t feign a desire that doesn’t exist. And Mary doesn’t ask it of him.

It’s an unconventional arrangement, but it’s comfortable and fits like a glove. Sherlock doesn’t give it a second thought, for instance, when Lestrade comes over one morning to talk to him about a potential case. They’re in the kitchen having coffee when Mary comes out of the bathroom, dressed for work. But in the moment before she can tug her silk scarf into place, Sherlock catches sight of a mark he sucked into the skin over her collarbone last night, and he knows without looking that Lestrade has seen it, too. Mary arranges her scarf and foregoes their normal morning kiss in lieu of a cheerful wave, which Sherlock returns. She then kisses Alice, says good morning to Greg, and is gone.

“Thought you were gay, mate,” Lestrade says finally. Sherlock rolls his eyes.

“Thank you for the reminder, Lestrade. I had forgotten that I prefer to suck cock.”

Lestrade balls up his napkin and tosses it at Sherlock’s head. Sherlock ducks, and it rolls across the floor until it is stopped by Alice’s knee.

“There are innocent ears!” he chides.

“She’s two,” Sherlock says, with an eye roll so great this time that it must have been close to severing his optic nerve. “She can’t understand what you’re saying.”

“But she probably is starting to understand what she’s seeing - that her mother is sharing a bed with her godfather.”

“We’re not having sex,” Sherlock says as he retrieves the napkin and tosses it in the wastepaper bin. It’s probably stretching the truth to say that, but Lestrade, much as Sherlock trusts him, simply wouldn’t understand. And besides, what business was it of anyone else’s?

“Pa, wanna go up,” Alice says plaintively, holding out her arms to him. Sherlock sighs and lifts her up.

“Sherlock,” he corrects gently, tapping her on the nose.

“S’a silly name,” Alice proclaims, scrunching up her nose. Lestrade snorts and then coughs as he accidentally inhales coffee. Sherlock kisses her forehead absently.

“These two deserved better than the man John became,” he says at last, not looking at Lestrade as he speaks. “He was my best friend, but… he changed. Or maybe he didn’t, and I just never saw the warning signs. Or I ignored them.”

He looks at Lestrade, who is watching him intently. “I’m fond of having them here. It… feels right. And I can watch Alice grow up, while Mary - Mary is extraordinary.”

Lestrade takes his empty coffee mug over to the sink and rinses it out. He then picks Sherlock’s empty mug up off the table, refills it, and presses it into his free hand.

“You sound like you’re in love,” he says finally. He gives a shadow of a smile. “And I should know. You were like this with Victor, too.”

He grips Sherlock’s shoulder, and adds, “I can’t pretend that I understand exactly what the arrangement is between you two, but as long as you’re happy…”

He trails off uncertainly. Sherlock nods.

“I am. I think the same can be said for Mary.”

Alice reaches out and grabs Lestrade’s nose, giggling madly.

“Nose!” she announces with glee. Lestrade scrunches up his face for her, and she laughs.

“All right, little one, Uncle Greg’s gotta go,” he says regretfully. He kisses the top of Alice’s head. “Be good for your Pa here, yeah?”

“Don’t encourage her,” Sherlock mutters, but he can’t deny that the word fills him with an unexpected warmth.

\-----

On a chilly November morning, Sherlock packs Alice and Mary off to visit Janine for the weekend.

He had spent most of October trying to figure out how he was going to approach the impending anniversary of Victor’s death with occupants in the flat. When he was living with John, it was easy for him to disappear for days on end without it being questioned. It was also equally easy to set John up on a date that would keep him occupied for a night; long enough for Sherlock to get through the difficult date in peace. But Mary was more keen than John had ever been, and Alice complicated matters.

He had finally contacted Janine out of desperation and asked if she would invite Mary out on a particular weekend in November. Janine had agreed without too many questions. Mary was immediately concerned when Janine phoned her, and she instantly deduced Sherlock’s role in the whole scheme.

“You’re trying to get rid of us,” she says over dinner one evening. Sherlock denies it outright, but Mary remains unconvinced. “You’re fibbing, Sherlock. Why do you want us to go?”

It floors him for a moment that Mary has seen in moments what it would even take Lestrade days to pick up on. Sherlock maintains that he has nothing to do with Janine’s invitation, and they spend the rest of the meal in relative silence. Eventually, Mary decides that they will go, though it’s plain she expects an explanation for Sherlock’s behaviour when they return. He doesn’t intend to give her one.

Sherlock spends most of the awful day alone, aggressively trying to distract himself with experiments or by reading articles in various scientific journals, but he is too aware of what it is he’s trying to avoid and as a result his mind keeps wandering back to twelve, fourteen, sixteen years in the past.

Lestrade comes over briefly after his shift at the Yard, because he is also aware of the date, and they share a drink and a cigarette.

“Damn fine man, he was,” Lestrade says gruffly, and Sherlock grunts in agreement. There are many things he won’t allow others to see, but Lestrade has more often than not been the exception to that over the years. He’s seen Sherlock at his worst already, and this doesn’t even come close.

The clock is approaching nine when Sherlock hears the door downstairs open and close, and then there is a heavy tread on the stairs up to 221B. The reason for this is apparent a moment later, when a key scrapes in the lock and Mary enters the flat, burdened with her bags on one shoulder and Alice sleeping on the other.

“Oh, Sherlock,” she says, slightly out of breath. “Could you - no, take the bags, sweetheart. Alice is ill. No use getting you sick too if I can help it.”

“What’s wrong with her?” Sherlock asks as he relieves Mary of their luggage and sets it aside.

“Nothing worrying. Just a fever and some vomiting. I’m hoping she’ll sleep it off, but she’d be more comfortable in her own bed.”

It turns out, however, that this is not the case. Alice wakes when Mary tries to put her to bed and cries in discomfort until Mary picks her up again. She only calms and dozes off, they discover, when she is being rocked by someone. The moment she is put down, she wakes and fusses.

Sherlock, unexpectedly grateful for the distraction, spells Mary at close to midnight. She goes to unpack and then takes a shower. He paces the living room, Alice asleep against his chest, her tiny body wracked with chills. He keeps her wrapped in a blanket, and she sleeps, though it’s far from peaceful.

Mary comes out into the living room, dressed in pyjamas and wearing her blue dressing gown. She puts the palm of her hand against her daughter’s forehead, and then sweeps the damp strands of blonde hair off her small forehead.

“Janine said something interesting as we were leaving,” she said softly. “She said you would be disappointed to see us back so soon.”

Sherlock shakes his head, reading the slight hurt in Mary’s voice. “Not like that. I had - intended for you to be gone this weekend, yes. But not because I dislike your company.”

Mary touches his face suddenly, and it’s only then that Sherlock realises his cheeks are damp. He turns away.

“You asked me once if I had anyone,” he says quietly. “I did. Once.”

He presses his face momentarily into Alice’s blanket, breathing in the scent of the sleeping child; ostensibly drying his tears. He hears Mary settle onto the sofa behind him and draws a breath. It’s easier to talk about this when he doesn’t have to see the expression on her face.

“His name was Victor,” Sherlock says softly. “We met at university when I was seventeen. We became… involved. He took a job with Mycroft after graduation. I graduated two years after he did, and we moved in together.”

Alice sniffles in her sleep and burrows closer to him. He adjusts his grip on her before continuing.

“Those weren’t easy years,” he says quietly. “I was… difficult. And Victor was hot-headed. We had our share of rows, but we loved each other deeply. He gave me an ultimatum, and I gave up the drugs. Traded one addiction for another, really, but at least working cases kept me clean. He seemed to find it a satisfactory compromise. We started to plan a life together. He - wanted children.”

“You didn’t,” Mary ventures.

“It’s not quite that simple,” Sherlock says. “I’m not an easy man to live with on the best of days, and I know I’m mostly insufferable. But Victor wanted a life with me, and I wanted one with him. If he wanted children, then that’s what we were going to do. But it never came to that.”

Sherlock shuts his eyes again and rests his cheek against the top of Alice’s head.

“We ran out of milk one evening and Victor went out to the shops to get some,” he says. And then he gives a dry laugh. “Of all the things - he was out buying _milk_. Four years in Mycroft’s service, and he ran into trouble just three streets away from our flat. He interrupted a robbery, and they put a bullet through his head.”

There is silence for a long moment after that. Then, he hears Mary rise from the sofa. She wraps her arms around him from behind and rests her head against the back of his shoulder.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers. “Sherlock, I am _so_ sorry. I never realised.”

“You couldn’t have known.” Sherlock cups a hand around the back of Alice’s head, holding her to him. “He always wanted a little girl. That’s what he told me. He wanted a daughter. And the thing is - he would have been the kind of parent Alice deserves. He would have been wonderful at it. Instead, she has -”

He breaks off.

“Us,” Mary says softly. “She has us - you and me. You’ll do right by her, I know it. You already are.”

Sherlock nods, more in acknowledgement than agreement. “Sometimes, when I don’t know what to do or say, I think about what he would have done. I try to imagine how he would have cared for her. I suppose - in a way, he _is_ a parent to her. Everything I am - is because of Victor.”

Mary pulls away and turns Sherlock to face her. She cups his face and swipes the pads of her thumbs across his damp cheeks.

“Was it tonight?” she asks. “Is this the day he died? That’s why you tried to send us away - so you could be alone.”

Sherlock gives a jerky nod.

“Is that how you met Greg?”

Sherlock shakes his head. “No. I’d known him for two years already. Donovan was the one who landed the - homicide, and she called Lestrade when she recognised the victim. He made sure he was the one to bring me the news.”

He can feel the tears now, silent and hot as they trickle down his cheeks. He shifts Alice so that he is holding her with one arm and swipes his hand across his face, irritated at his body’s betrayal. He closes his eyes for a moment and sees Victor’s lifeless body on a slab in the morgue. He had insisted on being the one to identify him, even though Lestrade had offered to do it instead. Someone - probably Molly - at least had had the foresight to close Victor’s eyes. If not for the hole in the center of his forehead, Sherlock could almost pretend that the last image he has of his lover is that of Victor sleeping.

Mary gently takes Alice from his arms and lays the child on the sofa. Alice stays sound asleep, for which Sherlock is distinctly grateful. He sinks to the floor, the strength leaving his limbs as grief overwhelms him. It feels like that night all over again. His chest is burning and his head is pounding, and there’s a gaping chasm where Victor _should_ be - but Victor’s not here and he never will be again.

Sherlock draws shuddering breaths. Mary sits down beside him, folding her legs beneath her, and wraps her arms around him. She pulls him against her chest. He buries his face in the crook of her arm, and weeps.

\-----

Mary changes her name.

She returns to her maiden name, and after some debate does the same thing for Alice. It takes several weeks to change all the relevant documents and licenses, and for Mary to get used to signing _Morstan_ again instead of _Watson._ But regardless of the change, Mary is adamant that they will not conceal the truth about John from Alice. When she’s old enough to understand - and when she starts asking questions - Mary will make sure she knows about her father. And about the man Mary fell in love with and married.

“I don’t intend to erase him,” she tells Sherlock one day. “That would be cruel. Alice needs to know where she came from. And - I want her to know that there was a time when I loved her father deeply. When he was a good man.”

It’s a subtle change, Mary returning to the name she chose for herself years ago, but the difference it makes is almost immediately noticeable. With it, Mary seems to shed the last of her melancholy. She is Mary Morstan, who chose her name and the path her life is now going to take. She couldn’t predict how her marriage would fall apart, how the man she loved would leave her, but she can control what happens now. It’s a powerful thing, being able to reclaim her identity, and it gives her a renewed energy. She laughs more now, and she cheerfully challenges Sherlock more often than before. She now is like the Mary he remembers from the months leading up to her wedding with John, energetic and feisty and bursting with happiness.

\-----

Alice is colouring in the living room one morning while Sherlock sorts through the boxes he’s pulled from storage. He has papers and photographs spread out on the floor all around him, and he sits cross-legged as he starts to organize everything. The photographs will go in an album, in roughly chronological order. The papers will be put into plastic sleeves and compiled in a binder, to better protect them. This was all Mary’s idea, as she thought it best that he start preserving his memories of Victor rather than tucking them away and trying to forget that they ever happened.

Alice toddles over to him and plops down on his knee. Sherlock wraps an arm around her automatically and continues to sort through the papers with his free hand.

“Who’s that?” Alice asks, pointing to a picture of Victor from their early days. He’s posing on the grounds of Cambridge, his dog sitting at his side.

“Victor,” Sherlock tells her quietly. “A friend of mine.”

“Doggie,” Alice says.

“Yes, that was his dog. Max.” Sherlock picks up the photograph and brings it closer so they both can see. “I wish you could have known him, Alice. You would have liked him. And he’d have loved you.”

“You should frame that. It’s a good picture of him.”

Sherlock hadn’t heard Mary enter the flat, but now her heels click across the floor to them. She kneels next to him, kisses his cheek in greeting, and then the top of Alice’s head.

“He’d be proud of you, you know,” Mary adds. “Just like I am.”

Sherlock turns his head and catches her lips in a gentle kiss. “I love you.”

Mary stares at him for a moment, stunned. And then she curls a hand around the back of his neck and kisses him soundly.

\-----

Sherlock has never dealt well with the heat.

He far prefers the blessedly-cool winters to the height of summer, and every year he promises himself that _this_ is the year he’s going to install air conditioning in the flat. It never happens, because usually the unbearable days are far outnumbered by the tolerable ones, and it never seems like a necessary investment.

But for a few days every summer, sometimes even a few weeks, he hates everything about this wretched plane of existence. On an afternoon in mid-July, the sweltering day is even more unbearable than usual, because he spends most of it holed up in a windowless room at the Yard going through box after box of old files. When he emerges, he is no closer to solving his case than he was at the beginning of the day, and he can feel a monstrous pressure building behind his eyes.

Sherlock rides back to Baker Street slumped in the back seat of a cab, a hand over his closed eyelids as he tries to keep the world at bay. Each turn the cab makes feels exaggerated, and he fights nausea. His head is throbbing now, pulsating with pain. When the cab stops outside Baker Street, he tosses a fistful of money at the driver and makes his way unsteadily to the front door.

Mary is home, and the flat is alive with the sounds of her cooking and Alice’s happy chatter. The toddler is sitting in front of the television, chanting along with the colourful programme that’s airing, and she barely acknowledges it when Sherlock bends down and drops a kiss on top of her head.

“What the hell happened to you?” Mary demands when Sherlock then steps into the kitchen. Her hand goes immediately to his forehead, more reflex than anything else. Her fingers are blessedly cool, and Sherlock sighs at the temporary - and fleeting - relief.

“Headache,” Sherlock says. He pulls away from her touch. “M’fine.”

He goes into the bathroom to splash cool water on his face and ends up on the floor with his head over the toilet as dry heaves wrack his body. Mary comes to his aid almost immediately, bringing him slight relief in the form of a cool, damp cloth that she drapes over the back of his neck.

“Headache my arse,” she says. “This is a migraine. Why didn’t you say anything this morning?”

“Didn’t think it would get this bad,” Sherlock manages. He isn’t a stranger to frequent headaches, but he hasn’t had a migraine since before John and Mary got married.

Mary pulls him to his feet and helps him to bed. The room is free of light that will aggravate his pain, but it still is stifling. Sherlock strips down to his shorts and t-shirt while Mary fetches two pedestal fans from other rooms in the flat. They do little more than stir the warm air, but the gentle breeze across Sherlock’s skin is a slight relief. Mary then brings him two cold compresses for his head and a glass of water.

“Sit up,” she instructs gently. “I found some naproxen in the bathroom.”

It’s an old prescription, three years at least, but at this point Sherlock will try anything. He takes the pills and then seeks shelter under the blankets again, his head as close to being encased in ice as he can manage.

Sherlock sleeps and wakes and sleeps again. His rest is far from peaceful; the only thing that can be said about it is that it is at least the only time when he is oblivious to the pain. His dreams are strange, as they always are when he takes migraine medication.

He is unaware of how much time has passed when he wakes for the third time. Mary is in the kitchen still, or perhaps again. It’s difficult to tell. Alice is still awake, however. Sherlock distinguishes her voice from Mary’s, though it’s difficult at first to discern the words. His head feels as though it has been stuffed with cotton, and his ears are clogged.

For a while, Sherlock merely lets the quiet conversation wash over him. There is life in this flat, something which he never believed he would find appealing. He’s spent his entire life wanting nothing more than to be left alone, and yet -

\- And yet. Here they are, for better or worse. It’s not the life he ever envisioned for himself, but it’s one that he created. It is his, and no one can take that from him.

The conversation in the kitchen continues.

“Mama?” he hears Alice ask.

“Yes, baby?”

“Where’s Daddy?”

Sherlock waits for Mary to correct her; instead, Mary simply says, “He’s sleeping. He isn’t feeling well.”

“He’s sick?” At Mary’s murmured assent, Alice asks, “Can I go see him?”

“He’s asleep, Ally.”

“I’ll be quiet,” Alice says.

A moment later, the bedroom door creaks open. Sherlock cracks open his eyes, but not for long. The light from the hallway causes pain to flare along his already-throbbing temples, and he is forced to shut his eyes again. He swallows back a wave of nausea and wishes it was possible to will oneself into non-existence. Almost anything would be better than this agony.

The bed dips slightly as Alice pulls herself up onto the mattress.

“Hullo, Alice,” Sherlock croaks weakly. He draws back the bedclothes enough for Alice to clamber underneath, and then he rearranges the blankets around her. She’s been bathed and dressed in her pyjamas. He hadn’t realised until now how late it was. “What is it?”

“Mama says you’re sick,” Alice says seriously. And then she leans in to kiss his cheek. “Does that help?”

Something wells in Sherlock’s throat, and he fights the terrifying emotion down.

“Yes,” he whispers. “Thank you, Ally.”

She falls asleep curled up next to him, her small hand folded in his larger one. Sherlock doesn’t drop off nearly as easily. His head is throbbing and he could use more ice, but calling for Mary would wake Alice, and getting up himself would cause even more agony.

Mary comes to his rescue, though, without him even having to ask. She brings two cold compresses and removes the old ones, stowing them back in the fridge until they need to be used again. Then, she carries Alice off to bed, leaving Sherlock to apply the ice-cold relief to his throbbing head. It doesn’t take the pain away completely, but it does numb it enough so that he can fall into a fitful sleep.

When next Sherlock opens his eyes, his head is tingling and his pillow feels odd. It takes him several disoriented moments to realise that it’s because he’s resting on Mary’s chest in a reversal of their usual sleeping position. She’s carding gentle fingers through his hair, and he has an arm draped across her stomach. One of the cold compresses remains across the back of his neck.

“Feeling better?” Mary asks quietly when she realises he’s awake. The room is dark, and Mary had been watching the stars through the window before she noticed him wake. She appeared to be a thousand miles away.

“Some,” Sherlock whispers. The pain is largely gone, but a side-effect of the medication that chased it away is that it leaves his limbs feeling heavy and listless. His head, though, feels as though it might float off his shoulders, and his mind is mostly blank. He is calm, after hours of being tossed around on a sea of pain. “Alice?”

“Sound asleep. She was very worried about you, you know.”

“So I gathered.” Sherlock closes his eyes again. Mary’s fingers through his hair lull him into a stupor. He eventually gathers his wits about him enough to murmur, “I want to adopt her.”

Mary’s fingers still. Silence reigns for a long moment. Then, she heaves a great sigh.

“Sherlock Holmes,” she says, almost in exasperation, “why don’t you just marry me?”

Sherlock opens his eyes and tilts his head to look up at her. She gazes steadily back.

“You know, Mary Morstan,” he says, “I may do just that.”  
 


End file.
